Colby Announces Spring 2002 Visiting Writers Series

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Colby College’s 2001-02 Visiting Writers Series will hold three readings this spring on the Waterville campus. Each program will begin at 7 p.m. in the Robins Room of Roberts Building and is open to the public free of charge. A book signing by the authors will follow each of the readings. The Visiting Writers Series is sponsored by Colby’s creative writing program.

On Tuesday, March 5, David Wagoner will read poetry. A long-time editor of Poetry Northwest, Wagoner has published 16 books of poems and 10 novels. His most recent poetry collection is Traveling Light: Collected and New Poems, winner of the William Stafford Memorial Award. His novel The Escape Artist was made into a movie by Francis Ford Coppola. He was awarded the Lilly Prize in 1991, has been nominated twice for the National Book Award and received numerous other awards in recognition of his writing. Wagoner was the chancellor of the Academy of American Poets for 23 years and has taught at the University of Washington since 1954.

On Tuesday, April 2, Howard Norman will read from his fiction and short stories. He has published three collections of storytelling from the Far North–The Wishing Bone Cycle, winner of the Harold Morton Landon Prize in Translation, Where the Chill Came From and Northern Tales: Traditional Stories of Eskimo and Indian Peoples. His novels The Northern Lights and The Bird Artist were both finalists for the National Book Award. He has also published several children’s books, radio plays and Kiss in the Hotel Joseph Conrad, a collection of short stories. His forthcoming novel, The Haunting of L, is about spirit, photography, murder and illicit love. Norman has been the recipient of a Lannan Literary Award for Fiction and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

On Tuesday, April 23, Bill Roorbach will be the guest author at Colby’s Edwin J. Kenney Memorial Non-Fiction Reading. Roorbach’s books include Into the Woods and Other Essays, Summers with Juliet, Big Bend (winner of the Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction), and the novel The Smallest Color. He has been a contributor to numerous publications, including Harper’s, The New York Times Magazine, The Atlantic Monthly and Granta, and is frequently a book critic for Newsday.